My 15/6/1's showed up yesterday!
Yesterday when I got off work I had to ride the bus home, load gear into my car and immediately head out for a gig up in Bellingham WA (about 90 miles away). I was planning on just taking my Schroeder 15+L and Markbass LMTube.
Lo and behold! When I got to my front door, there were two large boxes from FedEx waiting for me. I took them inside, opened up one of them and pulled out the LDS 15/6/1, hooked up my new Carvin DCM2000L and Tech 21 VT Bass, gave it a couple of thumps to confirm that it all worked. Threw everything in my car and headed out.
When I got to the gig the opening band's bassist asked if he could use my cab, but had his own head, which was a Mesa M-Pulse 600. I let him use it (we're old friends). The whole time they were playing I kept thinking that the soundguy had the bass too high in the PA. When they finished, the bassist says "That thing pounds!" The soundguy then comes up to me and says "Are you using the same cab? I didn't have him in the PA at all and wouldn't mind just running off stage volume for the bass again." ...I was dumbfounded. I thought the PA was blasting all of the bass I was hearing, but it was ALL the 15/6/1. I couldn't believe it.
I got on stage, hooked up my Carvin/Tech21 rig and checked my levels. Played the gig and had absolutely no shortage of volume to say the least. That gig was with my funk/pop/rock band and I have another gig tonight with my modern pop-country band. I'll post a more complete review after tonight's gig, but here are my initial impressions:
Fit, finish and form factor
These cabs absolutely scream quality. Don did a fantastic job on these. These are the tall version of Don's 15/6 design. They're quite a bit bigger than I had envisioned when I ordered them. Not a bad thing as I have enough vehicle space to haul them easily and I really don't have any problem with a cab giving it's woofer adequate internal volume. I haven't weighed them yet, but I'm guessing they're somewhere in the high-40's to low-50's (pounds). The side handles are placed high enough on the cab that picking them up and moving them around is easy. They're tall enough that despite being capable of lifting one in each hand, they're a bit awkward to carry two at the same time. The grills are perfect, the corners all fit perfectly flush, the bedliner finish is much smoother than the similar finish on Schroeder cabs. It felt a bit tacky to touch still, but I didn't hear any peeling/cracking noises as I pulled my rack case off at the end of the night, so I'm not too concerned with it. The only concern I have is that one of the cabs doesn't sit perfectly flat on the ground. It's minor (very minor), but there's a tiny bit of wobble, like when you have a chair that has one of its 4 legs a hair longer. This is bothersome, but it's such an insignificant amount that I don't think I'm going to bug Don about it.
Volume:
After reading all of the 15/6 threads I was a bit skeptical about people's volume reports regarding these cabs. Any skepticism I had has been wiped from mind. One of these cabs was carrying the room and quite frankly, dominating the PA. The PA wasn't overly loud like in some clubs, but it was still pumping pretty hard. No problem hearing one of these at all. I ordered two of these because I was paranoid about having enough volume... Whoops... I easily could have done with a single cab and been more than fine for any stage I'll be playing in the near future.
Tone:
I ordered these with a 3015LF, 6nd410, tweeter and Ralf's 800hz crossover. L-Pad's for the tweeter and the midrange are separate and there's no fixed padding. I've heard these described as having a bit of a vintage tonality. I can't say that I agree with that, nor would I say this is a modern sounding cab (I'm generalizing here, but modern cabs that I'd use for comparison against what a modern tone is would be the Epifani UL410, Berg AE410, Schroeder 15+L). This is more like running through a really high end, full range PA cab. Everything is there in balance. I did feel like my playing was under a microscope courtesy of the 6nd410. I like that kind of detail, so to me it was a nice thing to hear.
Let's go from the bottom up.
3015LF: I was really blown away by how much bottom end was coming out of this driver. I haven't had time to sufficiently break in these cabs, but the first note I played was quite thunderous. I'm driving these with plenty of power and even though last night was a fairly loud application, the 3015LF looked like it was barely moving. I expected that with it's really long xMax I'd be able to see the speaker moving back and forth, but to my surprise it looked like it was barely getting going. Very smooth sounding low end with no apparent peaks and valleys, at least as it compares to the Schroeder 15+L and previous Schroeder 410R that I've become accustomed to.
6nd410: I can't believe how much sound comes out of this guy! I rolled the L-Pad all the way down to about 25%. Very articulate and slightly aggressive midrange tonality from this speaker. Very robust. Much smoother upper mids than having a tweeter handle them like in a conventional 2-way design. I can see why the fEarful guys have been going to a fixed pad on the midrange. If there's no adverse effects from running my L-Pad down around 25% I'll just leave it, but I could definitely see going to a fixed pad.
Tweeter: I can see why people build these without the tweeter. I had the L-Pad on the tweeter rolled back to about 25% (like the midrange) and found a nice balance. Without the upper midrange being forced into the tweeter like on conventional 2-way designs, the sound coming from it was very airy and glassy. It was not unlike the upper-treble voicing of the Epifani UL tweeters. With the midrange handling all of the upper mids, this tweeter didn't sound harsh at all. I can still see certain gigs where I'll roll the tweeter down to around 5-10%. Ordering without the tweeter would be just fine and frankly I don't think you'd be missing much without it in there as most of the top end from a bass will be covered by the 6nd410. If you're trying to get some of that Marcus top end the tweeter would be a necessity. All that said, I'm glad it's there.
Overall: I'm very impressed with these after one gig. I'll know more tonight after a second gig in a different genre. Having one to use for live stuff and one to use as a drum monitor for my eDrums is going to be nice. I'll report back on how it works for that task once I get it all hooked up to my drum brain.
No new cab post would be complete without pics:
Overkill to be sure. The rack on top is 3U if you want a visual reference
Sexy
Might want to measure them but I am pretty sure. Amazing.
They look great. I'm looking forward to my 115HO. Don won't even talk to me about it at this point
